Superfluxous
by Casix Thistlebane
Summary: Xander goes on an adventure with a tofu cheese pizza


Author's note: Another oldie, again, circa fourth season. Oh, and I mentioned I've gone through lots of nome de plumes, right? Well, rather than have "Loo" get his own membership, "we've" decided to stick some of "his" oldies right here.  
  
Disclaimer: the characters within are property of  
  
Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox. No money is being  
  
made off of this.  
  
Spoilers: just vague references. shouldn't really  
  
disrupt anyone's buffy watching abilities.  
  
Rating: PG-13, but only for two words.  
  
Summary: Xander has a little late night fun with a  
  
husky and some tofu cheese.... (oo boy but that sounds  
  
a little wrong, doesn't it.)  
  
Superfluxus  
  
by Louis Thompson  
  
Januaries in Southern California can be quite pleasant  
  
at times. The temperature isn't too hot and humid, as  
  
it's likely to be over the summer, and we seldom have  
  
to worry about things such as snow (though that does  
  
have it's exceptions) or freezing temperatures. The  
  
sun is perpetually shining; its enough to set ones  
  
heart all a twitter. Or something like that. Who  
  
ever came up with that phrase, anyway, setting a heart  
  
all a "twitter"? What's a twitter? That never made  
  
any sense to me. Why not just say, "flutter", or even  
  
better, "beating"? Wouldn't that mean the same thing?  
  
English is funny language. No one can ever say what  
  
they really mean, they have to make it sound all nice  
  
first.  
  
I've been informed by my self appointed critic that  
  
I'm babbling again. I do that.  
  
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah,  
  
twittering. No, that's not right, I was talking about  
  
January. In SoCal. I think in any other town around  
  
here, the weather would be the only thing of interest  
  
for someone to talk about, unless they were doing a  
  
documentary on normalness. Sunnydale has never been  
  
normal.  
  
Not that I ever would have realized that, I suppose.  
  
After all, I've lived in Sunnydale all my life. Hadsomeone not pointed out to me that having at least ten  
  
pages in the yearbook set aside for obituaries wasn't  
  
really common practice, I would have just lived  
  
ignorantly. Or more likely died ignorantly. It's  
  
like, if I hadn't always known through Jesse that  
  
parents could be cool, understanding people, I might  
  
never have realized that my family life sucked so  
  
much. I'd have lived, and died, in total ignorance.  
  
I mean, how many parents routinely set fire to the  
  
kitchen for no reason other than it seemed like a good  
  
idea at the time?  
  
The critic is yelling at me again. She says that that  
  
never happened. Of course, she's right. But it  
  
wouldn't surprise me if it did.  
  
But then, who needs parents who set fire to things  
  
when one's parents are just as exciting when they get  
  
totally trashed and end up threatening each other with  
  
a shot gun?  
  
I check that shot gun on a regular basis. It's not  
  
loaded. It never has been. I don't think my dad even  
  
owns any bullets. That's kind of reassuring in a way.  
  
Unless my mom should ever decide to bludgeon my dad  
  
to death with it, they're not likely to kill each  
  
other.  
  
Or me.  
  
That's the demon's job.  
  
The critic is at it again. She's always defending the  
  
demon's rights. "Not all demons are out to kill you!"  
  
She tells me.  
  
Yeah, some of them are out to maim, blind, and  
  
torture.  
  
And whine. That seems to be all the demon living with  
  
me is good for recently. Though the ex- demon is good  
  
for more. Oh yes, she's good for much, much more.  
  
Damn critic just hit me. She says I need to get backto the main topic. Now she's hitting me for writing  
  
down that she's hitting me. Now she's--  
  
Okay, I'm slow, I'll admit it, but eventually I do  
  
figure things out. Like, if your girlfriend is  
  
hitting you for writing that she's hitting you, it's  
  
time to stop writing that she's beating you over the  
  
head repeatedly, shouting obscenities and threatening  
  
to unplug the computer.  
  
But I digress.  
  
It's Giles' own fault, I suppose, for making me write  
  
about what happened. He listens to me talk on a daily  
  
basis. He should know better!  
  
But then, I suppose I'm the best one for the job, as I  
  
am the one who managed to actually SEE what happened.  
  
Never knew there was an advantage to being a pizza  
  
delivery guy aside from tips from drunken co-eds who  
  
can't quite calculate and only have a fifty.  
  
I'm getting off topic again, I suppose. Here's what  
  
happened:  
  
I was at work. I deliver pizzas. It's not really a  
  
career, but hey, the guidance counselors in high  
  
school always said that someone from my generation is  
  
likely to change jobs ten or twelve times before  
  
settling on a field. I've been out of high school for  
  
a little more than six months now. I'm more than  
  
halfway there already.  
  
Anyway, I was at work, and we got a call to deliver on  
  
campus, to one of the rooms that was just a couple of  
  
doors down from Buffy and Willow's. Naturally, I  
  
jumped at the chance. I could deliver the pizza,  
  
swing by and visit my friends, and if the boss  
  
complained about the delay, I'd just tell him I was  
  
having a discussion with a drunken college student  
  
over the fact that a one dollar bill and a ten dollar  
  
bill are not the same thing.  
  
Why is it, my happy plans never quite work out likethey're supposed to?  
  
So I was driving over to campus, when I suddenly had a  
  
flashback to the horrors of the summer, and my  
  
admittedly not entirely young car decided that it had  
  
had quite enough, thank you very much, and committed  
  
suicide right there on the side of the road.  
  
Whoever thought it would be a good idea to put the  
  
most popular pizza place three miles outside of town  
  
was a maniac.  
  
I figured standing by the side of the road wasn't  
  
going to do me any good, and this pineapple and green  
  
pepper pizza (with tofu cheese. That seems to be why  
  
we're so popular with the college crowd) wasn't  
  
getting any fresher, so I decided to hike it over to  
  
the dorms, and thank whatever being it was that  
  
controlled such things that my bosses hadn't ever  
  
decided to adopt the "thirty minutes or less or your  
  
pizza is free" campaign. Funny, that was a fact I had  
  
been cursing only a few weeks ago when I was still  
  
working with the construction company, and my pizza  
  
showed up two hours late.  
  
Karma's a bitch sometimes.  
  
After promising the irony gods that I'd never curse  
  
the late pizza guy again, and stop stinging on their  
  
tips, if only they'd send a car by that was heading  
  
for campus, and hadn't even gotten to the part about  
  
it being filled with buxom blondes and brunettes when  
  
just such a thing arrived, pulled over to the side of  
  
the road, and spit out one of the most gorgeous  
  
creatures I'd ever seen.  
  
If I'd ever had a thing for dogs, I would have been in  
  
love on the spot.  
  
As it was, the woman following the giant blue eyed  
  
husky was perfectly willing to fill that need for me.  
  
Once she'd pulled her canine away from my precious  
  
pizza, that is.  
  
"Hey." She said.  
  
"Well hello there." I replied.  
  
The critic is complaining again. Something about me  
  
never having been that suave. I tell her that it's  
  
only an approximation. I've never understood those  
  
writers that seem to be able to remember absolutely  
  
everything that was said word for word.  
  
Things progressed as they tend to in such situations,  
  
and the next thing I knew, my pizza and I were  
  
squeezed in between the woman's too sisters. The dog  
  
got the passenger seat.  
  
I'm fairly certain I told them that I needed a ride to  
  
the campus. I think they thought I meant a different  
  
campus.  
  
We ended up on the old football field near the middle  
  
school. I wondered if I hadn't charmed these three  
  
ladies (and their dog) a little too well, (the critic  
  
is at it again. I'd ignore her, but then she'd get  
  
REALLY mad....) but the instant I saw the symbols  
  
someone had painted onto the grass, I knew that my  
  
strange ability to attract those with a love of the  
  
occult (Willow's spell notwithstanding) was at work  
  
again. And the pizza was getting cold.  
  
And cold tofu cheese is not a happy thing.  
  
I turned to leave when the husky stood up on it's hind  
  
legs, placed its front paws on my shoulders, and  
  
lunged at my face. Naturally, I leaned backwards,  
  
only to discover myself staring in the face of a  
  
rather cheerful looking old guy with bad breath and  
  
blue eyes.  
  
Giles told me later that the man must have been a  
  
Phouka. Fat lot of good that did me then.  
  
The three girls had moved in behind me, and were also  
  
laughing, and starting to chant. They were dragging  
  
me towards an enormous bonfire towards the center of  
  
the field when I saw my friends (all but Buffy, in  
  
fact. I think she was out patrolling, or doingsomething equally foolish at the time) tied, gagged,  
  
and blindfolded next to the fire.  
  
I took one look at the situation and knew exactly what  
  
to do. Unfortunately, with the death grip that the  
  
four nasties had on my shoulders, running away  
  
screaming until I found help didn't seem to be a  
  
viable option. I was at a loss for another solution.  
  
No one seems to believe me when I tell them what  
  
happened next. You'd think that people who'd spent as  
  
long as we had fighting off legions of the undead in  
  
ways that would do Bruce Campbell proud would have  
  
learned not to doubt certain things, as implausible as  
  
they sound.  
  
And besides, it seems to me that the instant we decide  
  
something could be caused by something so tame and  
  
mundane as a coincidence, the world decides to up and  
  
try and end on us. Again.  
  
So I don't think it should come as any surprise to  
  
anyone that the solution to the problem turned out to  
  
lie in the fact that phoukas hate tofu.  
  
They have remarkable taste that way.  
  
The critic just hit me again.  
  
In my struggles to escape my captors, the pizza, which  
  
I had still been carrying in its handy- dandy package  
  
thingy, shifted to one side, and before I could catch  
  
it (its amazing how quickly you settle into a pattern  
  
of saving the pizza first and you own ass later), it  
  
slid out of the package completely and coated the old  
  
guy in a gooey, pineapple-y mess.  
  
There was a long pause. I think we were all waiting  
  
to see if the guy would melt or something. No such  
  
luck. Instead he just started howling, and in trying  
  
to scrape the cheese off his face, managed to smear it  
  
all over the girls, who also got very upset.  
  
Apparently, as the brunette had shrieked multiple  
  
times directly into my ear, she had just bought that  
  
shirt.  
  
Thus distracted, it was a simple task to untie my  
  
friends and disrupt the ritual. The cheese coating,  
  
it seemed, was enough to put the girls off of magic  
  
for a while, they were all gone when we turned back  
  
around. All that was left was a messy box, and an  
  
unhappy old guy whimpering into the ground. Even as  
  
we cleaned up the mess from the ritual, I was trying  
  
to figure out where else I could apply for a job. I  
  
mean, there's late, cold pizzas, and then there's  
  
late, cold, pizzas that smell like dog breath and have  
  
phouka hair in the cheese.  
  
Giles still says that there must have been something  
  
else that I did and wasn't aware of. I think he's  
  
upset that a pizza could hold such power. It's too  
  
American, or something to that effect. He's probably  
  
hoping that in making me write the story down, he's  
  
going to get me to tell him what I REALLY did to get  
  
away from the evil old guy and his bimbo-ettes. (The  
  
critic informs me that since "bimbo" is a female term  
  
anyway, the "ettes" is some weird, longish word that  
  
starts with an "s". Super flowing. Superfluxus. Or  
  
something. I tell her "bimbo-ettes" sounds better,  
  
and she wanders off grumbling. Least now I wont get  
  
hit.)  
  
In fact, all he's done is make me get bruised. And I  
  
hate it when someone reads over my shoulder. Uh oh,  
  
gotta run, the critic is coming back--  
  
The End 


End file.
